Marion Baumann-Parkurst

Marion Baumann-Parkhurst (born in 1912) was the daughter of Julius and Frieda Rosenthal, and is a Holocaust survivor of the Bergen-Belsen concentration camp.

She had an uneventful middle-class childhood with her Jewish parents in Konigsberg, East Prussia. Her performance in school was average but with an idyllic home life until the Hitler years. Always athletic, she had been in serious training as a 1936 Summer Olympics contestant until participation was denied to her on religious grounds; the Nazi government would refuse an honour won by a Jew in accordance with the 1934 Nuremberg Laws which effectively canceled the family's German citizenship. The escalation of Nazi oppression created an exodus of the Jewish population although Marion's parents opted to remain in the country. But when the government confiscated the father's advertising business the family, penniless, fled to Holland while that country was still free. It was there that Marion met and married Walter Baumann.

Fleeing the Nazis

Nazi occupation of the Low Countries saw most Jews sent to concentration camps, including her parents who there lost their lives. Marion and Walter were sent to Bergen-Belsen, there to remain until set free by Allied troops toward the end of the war. They were then returned to Holland as stateless, displaced persons. The couple, by that time with a newborn daughter, turned toward America, settling finally in California.

Post war

Until they became proficient in English Walter could only go from job to job. Marion, from a slow start at cleaning houses, gravitated into the medical field, to eventually earn a degree as a registered nurse and a thirty-year career with Kaiser hospitals. But their marriage did not survive the stresses of post-war living. Divorce was followed by remarriage to Don Parkhurst, a schoolteacher-lab tech, with a honeymoon that evolved into years of world travel. Eventually retiring to Scotts Valley, California, they have since been following literary pursuits.

Further reading

* "Searching Survivor and the answer I found", Marion Baumann-Parkhurst ISBN 0-977-72515-4

External links

* [http://www.searchingsurvivor.com/ Searching Survivor and the answer I found - Autobiography my Marion Baumann-Parkhurst]